General questions about migration to live@edu

Yes, email sent to your @wbs.ac.uk will continue to be delivered as now. Email you send will still appear to have come from your @wbs.ac.uk email address.

Who will be affected by this migration?

All staff who have an @wbs.ac.uk email account

Students who started before 2009 and have GroupWise accounts have all already been migrated to the student Googlemail system.

PhD Researchers and Associate staff are not affected.

Students who have @mail.wbs.ac.uk accounts are not affected.

Were alternative email systems considered?

Upgrading the current GroupWise system was rejected due to the costs involved and the uncertainty regarding the product's manfacturer, Novell. WBS successfully outsourced the WBS student email system (to Google) in 2008 and so were keen to achieve similar benefits with the staff system.

IT Services considered a similar service provided by Google, but concluded this was a less attractive proposition because:

Microsoft commit to keeping our data in the EU, but Google do not

ITS currently run Exchange for staff, so the transition would be more transparent for their users, and the technical fit is better.

What is Live@edu?

It is a Microsoft-hosted service which provides users with:

Outlook Live - a 10GB email account (the current GroupWise quota for most users is 4GB)

Support for calendars, contacts and tasks within the email account

Windows Live Messenger instant messaging fully integrated as part of the Live@edu service

Windows Live SkyDrive - 25 GB online storage space for photos, music, etc. accessible from anywhere online. (Note that Skydrive is intended for the storage of personal data such as photos or music, not for corporate data. It is not implemented or managed in the same way as the email and Office parts of the service.)

Access to Live@edu is available either through a desktop client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or through a web browser. Live@edu offers good cross-platform compatibility, with an identical web browser experience across Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer. Outlook 2010 (Service pack 1) is the recommended client for PCs or Office 2011 (Service Pack 1) for Macs.

Email will be stored at Microsoft's Data Centre in Dublin, with a copy also held in Amsterdam. It is important to the University for legal reasons that email data is held within the EU rather than the US or elsewhere in the world.

The University of Warwick retains ownership of the data. Our agreement with Microsoft is very clear that data held within this system is classed as Organisational Data and as such is the property of the University, not Microsoft; they acquire no rights to do anything at all with the email they store other than to hold it on our behalf; they do not scan the contents of messages (except for virus and spam filtering) or otherwise utilise the data in any way.

Is there a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

As with other services of this type, there is no Service Level Agreement and no provision for Disaster Recovery in the event of the service being unavailable. However many Universities and higher educational institutions are using Live@edu and as a highly visible service, there is an incentive for Microsoft to ensure Live@edu is always available.

What provision is there for Disaster Recovery and backup?

Our data will be held in the Dublin Data Centre as well as another Data Centre in Amsterdam to provide resilience. There is no backup to tape, as Microsoft believe resilience and backup is provided through having copies of our data in two geographically separate data centres.

How secure is the new Email System?

The Live@edu system is as secure as the current Warwick in-house system, in that the underlying technology/protection is the same, and as such a move to an outsourced system will not weaken the security of emails. This was checked by the University’s Data Protection Officer prior to the move of students to this email system.

As with anything, the biggest weakness comes from the human element and we have no control over emails being printed out and left lying around, forwarded to personal accounts and phones which we have no control over, or laptops being lost. Unfortunately, one of the biggest sources of hacking, both here and elsewhere, is people revealing their passwords to others, either deliberately or via a phishing email.

What happens if migrating all archived email puts an account over 10GB?

IT Services found that when migrating from GroupWise to Exchange the stored size of emails nearly doubled. As such WBS staff who have mailboxes over 4GB will be contacted prior to the migration to review options, including deleting old and unwanted email. Importantly, if an account reaches the 10GB limit it will neither be able to send or receive messages until this is resolved.

Who will manage the spam filtering?

Initially spam filtering will be run at Warwick. However ITS will review this if necessary as the Live@edu service also includes SPAM filtering. WBS will no longer provide the iCritical anti-spam service.

Will mail lists set up in SITS and elsewhere still work?

Yes - all that is happening is that the delivery location has changed. The addresses in the lists are unchanged.

Can I connect using the Outlook client?

If you wish to connect using the Outlook client, you will need to use Outlook 2007 or above with Outlook 2010 the recommended option. This is because Windows Live is based on Exchange 2010 which uses auto-discovery to connect, rather than typing in server names as now.

What username will I use to log in?

Usernames will be of the form <IT Services username>@live.warwick.ac.uk, e.g. bssxxx@live.warwick.ac.uk.

Questions about what will migrate:

When will WBS be migrated?

The staff email migration strategy will be piloted towards the end of this calendar year, with the main rollout due to start for WBS in February 2012. It is likely to take 4-6 weeks to migrate all WBS staff accounts.

Will all emails be moved across into the new system?

Yes – all live mail will be moved. Messages over 25MB will not be migrated (a restriction of the Microsoft system). All affected users have been contacted with a list of such messages.

Will there still be an archive system?

No – with a 10GB quota there is no need for a separate archive system. Email in the WBS GW Archive system will not be migrated.

Will my folder structure be retained?

Yes, testing has shown that the cabinet folder structure is maintained.

Will my Calendar be migrated?

Our intention is to migrate calendar information although this will depend on the capabilities of the migration tools. More information will be provided once testing is complete.

Will I need to move any data myself?

No – ITS/WBS Solutions will move all data for you.

What will happen to Resource Accounts?

These accounts will also be migrated.

Will my folder permissions be migrated?

It is not possible to migrate any permissions you have set on folders, for example, to allow others to see some of your mail. We shall investigate the opportunities for folder sharing as part of the pilot project and provide advice and support.

How will mail folder permissions migrate?

Mail folder permissions will not be migrated and any permissions will need to be re-created manually. Permissions will have to be set individually on each folder as the service does not support hierarchical folder permissions.

Is Proxy functionality supported?

Proxy funtionality is not supported by the Live@EDU system. There are alternative solutions however such as 'send as' and 'send on behalf of'. We shall test these with our IT Services colleagues and provide more advice once this is complete.

What is the maximum number of recipients per Email

The Live@edu system allows for 500 recipients for each email. The current Warwick limit is 150 per mail while the WBS system is unlimited. Users wishing to bulk-email will need to use a separate system such as the Mach5 mailer.

What is the maximum number of recipients in a 24 hour period?

The Live service imposes a limit of 500 recipients in a 24 hour period. If you exceed this limit you will not be able to send any further messages until the number of recipients that were sent messages in the past 24 hours drops below the limit. Multiple messages to the same recipient all count towards the limit.

This limit applies regardless of whether you are sending email internally or externally. Internally however there will be distribution lists (e.g. all WBS academic staff). A message sent to this list would only count as having 1 recipient (the list) rather than counting all the staff on that list.

There is no limit on the number of emails which can be sent to you.

What is the maximum attachment size?

25MB (for comparison it is currently 20MB in GroupWise). In Outlook Web App however the limit reduces to 10MB.

Other questions

Where would the MX record point to?

Currently WBS sends out email via its own relays. After migration these would initially point at the Warwick Mail Relays, but this may change in the future.

Would the alias system still be available and will a department be able to run their own email service if required?

Yes - it will still be possible to change delivery address in the alias system if you want to forward mail to a locally run system.

What is the maximum number of emails per minute?

The system will only allow you to send 30 mails a minute. While this is unlikely to be a problem for most people, it may cause a problem for any automated systems.